Does everyone think childcare should be paid for?

Research has shown that where children under 4 from poor backgrounds are not given access to the same opportunities as those from more affluent households, they are more likely to perform badly at exams age 16 and more likely to be unemployed as adults so giving access to quality childcare and experiences breaks the cycle of families claiming benefits generationally.

Yeah that's bonkers too. The whole system is insane. Single parents who work FT taxed to death, with half the tax free earnings a couple are allowed, losing child benefit and "tax free childcare" etc at half the income a couple can earn while still claiming it. We need to start taxing everyone on a household basis and stop penalising people who actually work FT.

But many do make money, the accounts for my child’s nursery are very healthy.

We pay over £2500 a month, not even full time!

This!

You do realise we are loosing early years settings at an alarming rate due to them not making money....65% rise in spring 22 against spring 21. Overall we have a reduction of more than 4000 settings in the last year with an increased number expected as costs of providing care hit in the next few month.
Most are unpaid by funding schemes, have increased labour costs due to changes in minimum wage increases, increased energy costs, increased rates, increased consumable costs ...if the funding rate is under £5 an hour 3 children don't even cover the wage costs of one staff member let alone the overheads of a nursery.
Most childminders have not increased their fees in years with many on sites asking if a 5p or 10p an hour increase is fair given rising costs of utilities and food. Typically at £5 or less an hour.

A subsidised system where parents had to work FT to access it might be the easiest and best compromise after reading these replies.

I don’t agree with the current rules around working 16 hours a week for at least NMW to access the funding, childcare should be covered for FT work. Or you only get funding for the hours you work, not 30 hrs if you only work 16 etc.

So many posts here looking only at the input cost, not what the output upside would be. The general level of understanding of economics in the UK is woeful and a large part of the reason our Governments get away with this kind of incompetence. People fighting like rats in a bag howling about "funding someone else" while apparently being so ignorant they don't realise that funding certain public goods makes everyone better off. That's the point of it.

We have a country where the birth rate has been steadily dropping, and where we are not meeting the replacement rate, and have not been for some time. On top of this we have a major economic crisis, and the government is searching for ways to get economically inactive people into work to prop up the economy, and the tax coffers.

A significant proportion of low and none active people economically will be women with care responsibilities, either for children or older adults. Either they can't afford to work or can't make it work with other commitments. Getting those women back into work requires investment in the social infrastructure they need to support them with their responsibilities. That means childcare, carers, adult social care and more. Not just subsidised, but solid investment to provide high quality services, which are well paid, and become valued career paths for the people that work in them. (A woman can dream, right?)

I have kids, and I have my own opinions of the eye-watering cost of the childcare I've used for my two. I think we can and should do a lot more in this country to support families, and especially children.

Childcare is ALWAYS paid for. Either by someone being paid to do it or by someone not working in a paid job in order to do it.

But also, few suggest these are all free. Affordable would be a good start.

Everyone who earns more than around £12,750 a year pays tax. Including many pensioners - and no doubt a fair number of children.

The countries that make childcare free ir very heavily subsidised (max a couple of hundred pounds per month) i.e. most of our comparable European neighbours plus some others do not do so out of altruism. They do so because it's been proved by the data to be beneficial for society as a whole.

It increases tax revenue and productivity. In reduces inequality. It stops the waste of many women's skills and aids their career progression, which then leads to more women later in life in senior positions and it's also been proved that companies with Boards with a mix of men and women in executive positions produce more profit and are more stable than those with men dominating, therefore greater ecomonic stability and more tax take. Higher productivity. Less stress on marriages so lower divorce rates, lower gender paygap, better example set to children, etc etc.

It's a no brainer basically and pays for itself many times over. That is why sensible countries subsidise it almost entirely/ fully cover the cost. The reason this doesn't happen in the UK is the same reason we have the lowest productivity in the G7, the reason we had Brexit, the reason the NHS and education are collapsing, the reason our infrastructure is falling apart and the reason that there were no plans in place for food and energy security: no long-term planning from successive Governments, and an electorate that doesn't demand it or hold them to account for not doing it.

I think it should be heavily subsidised. Staying at home with your children should be a privilege IMO and working should be the norm, in reality a lot of women stay home or work part time in very low paid jobs that work around their kids because they can't afford childcare costs.

Plus the government already does subsidise childcare costs quite a lot with universal credit and tax free childcare but I don't think a lot of people know about it and they don't pay the costs upfront which means unless you have a months childcare fees up front you can't afford to go back to work, which kind of defeats the object.

Of course if it's a choice between funding the NHS and this then I'd choose the NHS but the government pays for lots of things which are far less important IMO. I think they could fund these things properly, they just don't care to.

Nonetheless, those children who are born should have a decent start, in a family that can afford a decent quality of living. It’s not fair to penalise kids for the climate excesses of the top 1%. Research suggests birth rates are slowing/declining around the world - any growth is really because we are living longer - and also that those who have the highest carbon emissions are the richest. Not subsiding childcare isn’t an effective way to affect their behaviour.

If child care, education, health care, old-age/disabled adult care are all free. And housing, food, all living costs for those not working are free, (which they are in the form of benefits and old age pensions). Then who is contributing???

By the time most under 35 retire there won’t be a state pension, not like there is currently anyway, why else do you think the government enforce paying into private pensions?

It's true people aren't being incentivised to have children but that's probably not a bad thing with climate issues.

I appreciate people have to have children for society as a whole to carry on but we are still having far too many children purely because people see it as their right

Plus I also very much believe that we as a society pay it forward. We pay for children to have an education because we ourselves were educated. In the future I will want to afford to retire, and those children whose childcare I paid for will by then be paying taxes. And so on.

What if both parents don’t want to work? By that I mean the woman as it’s not often an option for the man. We have moved towards a society where 2 wages are needed to raise children/run a home but IME a lot of women don’t really want this. This has been driven by rising house prices but also more women entering higher education and having careers. In my graduate class, having spent (or parents spent) tens of thousands on becoming qualified in a traditionally male subject, out of the 10 women I am the only one (we are all still in touch) working anything like full time.

I think it was probably easier when women hoped to find a rich man to look after them and their children tbh.

If you want a healthy state pension pot you need to ensure the tax paying workforce will continue to be filled. Making it possible for people to have more than one child and then ensuring that child has good early years provision (as a recognised key foundation for later good attainment) makes fiscal as well as social sense.

Lots of countries do have highly subsidised childcare Canada/France/ Netherlands /Scandinavian countries are some of them. When I had DC I was earning £40K but was married so no childcare help for me. He was a higher earner and by the time no 2 came along it made no financial sense for me to work.

Standard story of divorce blah de blah. I earn about £24k now in a flexible job and get UC top ups. If I still earned 40k I’d get no UC.

yes I know I should of stayed in work and hindsight is a wonderful thing. Even wraparound care is rubbish where I am though no breakfast club and after school childcare finishes at 5. No childminders.

This isn’t meant to be goady btw I’m just using examples to show how I don’t understand the train of thought. How one scenario is totally fine whilst the other is detestable to people

Its like it’s ok for adults to cost the government money but not small children. Regardless of the fact that 30/40 years from now society will be dependent on those small children

Absolutely agree. Because it isn’t healthcare and the kids are “playing” all day, people don’t get it.

Doris didnt work a day in her life and is costing £500k (nothing wrong if you don’t work).

Daisy needs a good start in life and might earn £500k a year one day!

completelt agree we should invest in our future bus drivers, teachers, doctors, gardners, accountants, carers, the list goes on

My kids are well beyond childcare age but I think we really do need high quality subsidised childcare where staff are properly paid. (I think subsidised rather than free, but very affordable, maybe cost would be related to parents’ salaries in some way?)

That would mean people who want to go to work wouldn’t be forced to give up and instead would work the hours they choose, and pay tax on their salary, which would make them and their families better off. There would be fewer staff shortages across the economy, including in nurseries, which would become a more attractive career option. And grandparents wouldn’t feel they had to step in to provide free care. Really can see this being an investment that pays for itself. Don’t know why we wouldn’t.

Yes there is a sense of entitlement to help. Would you be happy only your taxes go to your families healthcare? Or would you like us all to chip in so they can get better healthcare?

works the same way with childcare - as I’m sure you’re aware your child going to nursery benefits them greater than if they were stuck at home all day. Which in turn will benefit us all. (You paying more taxes, spending more and arguably your child doing well at school and beyond).